The Project Gutenberg EBook of Raphael, by Alphonse de Lamartine

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Title: Raphael
Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty

Author: Alphonse de Lamartine

Release Date: July 25, 2004 [EBook #13019]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: ALPHONSE DE LAMARATINE.]

RAPHAEL, or

PAGES OF THE BOOK OF LIFE AT TWENTY

BY ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE

_ILLUSTRATED BY SANDOZ_

SOCIETE DES BEAUX-ARTS
PARIS, LONDON AND NEW YORK

1905

Comedie d'Amour Series

INTRODUCTION

It is all very well for Lamartine to explain, in his original prologue,
that the touching, fascinating and pathetic story of Raphael was the
experience of another man. It is well known that these feeling pages
are but transcripts of an episode of his own heart-history. That the
tale is one of almost feminine sentimentality is due, in some measure,
perhaps, to the fact that, during his earliest and most impressionable
years, Lamartine was educated by his mother and was greatly influenced
by her ardent and poetical character. Who shall say how much depends on
one's environment during these tender years of childhood, and how often
has it not been proved that "the child is father to the man?" The
marvel of it is that a man so exquisitely sensitive, of such
extraordinary delicacy of feeling, should have been able, in later
years, to stand the storm and stress of political life and the grave
responsibilities of statesmanship.

Although not written in metrical form, Raphael is really a poem--a
prose poem. Never upon canvas of painter were spread more delicate
tints, hues, colors, shadings, blendings and suggestions, than in these
pages. Not only do we find ourselves, in the descriptions of scenery,
near to Nature's heart, but, in the story itself, near to the heart of
man. Aix in Savoy was, in Lamartine's time, a fashionable resort for
valitudinarians and invalids. Among the patrons of the place was Madame
Charles, whose memory Lamartine has immortalized as "Julie" in Raphael
and as "Elvire" in the